The year of the Apron?

I am off to a good start with 2009 – one finished knitted project (yet to be blogged) and a sewing project done. I kind of made a deal with myself to try and make or buy all birthday gifts for as little financial outlay as possible (a deal made for 2 reasons, first being that we are saving for our strawbale house on one wage and, second, I want to be more resourceful, learn new skills & prove to myself & my family that giving is the main point!) as with as much thought as possible.

Between our two families & our own little family their are a great number of birthdays. I usually leave Pete’s side up to him – and I’ll probably continue to do so with a few exceptions as he knows them best – and just do my side but I usually consult with him before I go ahead with any gifts. He didn’t really like the Op Shop idea for gifts but when he saw what my Dad bought the kids for $8 (a Greenfield tractor with a trailer & a Baby Born? bath thing) he was pretty impressed but I think his doubt remains over my ability to find the time & motivation to scour Op Shops for bargains and he is probably right… we’ll see.

The other thing is that we seem to be making friends in this little town and we are about to go to our second birthday party in 12 months… wow, we’ve really hit the big time! Seriously, this is the second birthday party from the Playgorup Crowd and we’ve only been to Playgroup 3 times so it’s great. It’s a boys birthday party. We may get invited to more as we become more involved & we may not, either way I think this will be a great gift for all the 1, 2 and 3 year old parties we go to:

Quick & easy to make I used this pattern but only cut three lengths for the ties. The material came from Mum’s stash – I love it & wish I could sew better so I could make myself some 3/4 pants with the reaminder… The whole project from start to finish took me about an hour – not bad for a beginner I thought!

Sophie has already requested a pink one and I want to make one for Sam too but I think I’ll save them for birthday gifts. They both love to cook, especially mixing which they both fight over, and aprons would probably make my life a little easier. Now that Sam is pretty much out of nappies my time spend doing washing has seriously decresed! Yay for kids who like to toilet train early – 19 months!

P.S. For those of you who want to know how I did it…. I didn’t, he did! It’s been hot and he’s been running around in “nunies” aka undies. The first week we had a poo in his undies every day (sometimes twice a day) for 5 days and lots of wee-wees but after that it clicked for him and he’d just do a wee on the grass and now one more week on he goes in the toilet with the occasional accident mostly related to Mum & Dad not listening when he says “wee-wee” (which he uses for both wee & poo). We put him in a cloth nappy at night (which he doesn’t like) and it’s uaually dry in the morning so that may disappear soon too… Cloth makes all the difference in my opinion as they feel the wet so much more and therefore recognise it much earlier. Who knows? But I am happy!